Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 311
July 24, 2013
July 21, 2013
Reader Question Day #68 – the knightly orders of DEMONSOULED
Note that this week’s Reader Question Day CONTAINS SPOILERS for the entire DEMONSOULED series. Read at your own risk!
MM asks:
Would an Arminiar knight beat a Dominiar or a Justiciar knight?
Probably. The Arminiar knights are battle-hardened, on account of constantly fighting the Malrags coming down from the Great Northern Waste and invading Northreach.In fact, the Arminiars have done their jobs so well that most of the realm thinks Malrags are only a story, or an ancient foe from the past that long ago died out. Of course, in SOUL OF SERPENTS, everyone in the Grim Marches learns otherwise.
The Justiciars and the Dominiars, by contrast, haven’t faced a foe on the level of the Malrags in the centuries since Randur Maendrag accidentally destroyed Old Dracaryl. The Justiciar Order was originally founded to guard the realm from dark magic and serpent worship, but in time became corrupt and more interested in the acquisition of lands, especially after the fall of Old Dracaryl. The Dominiar Order split off in protest of that corruption…and, in time, spent most of its time trying to seize new lands and fighting the Justiciars.
But Mazael destroyed the Dominiars in SOUL OF TYRANTS and the Justiciars in SOUL OF SWORDS. So the Arminiars are the only knightly order left in the realm. One of the ideas I’m contemplating for the next series set in the world of DEMONSOULED is centering the story around the Arminiars, but I haven’t decided anything so far.
EJT asks:
If you do not mind me asking, how many books are you planning for the GHOSTS series?
As long as I can keep ‘em from getting stale and people keep buying them, I’ll keep writing GHOSTS books. 
More concretely, I’m planning to do between ten and fourteen, with any more beyond fourteen determined by whether or not they’re getting stale and if people are still buying them.
-JM
SOUL OF SWORDS – 1,000 copies
I am pleased to report that as of last week, SOUL OF SWORDS sold its one thousandth copy!
Thanks, everyone! It’s the last book in the series, so it’s nice to see DEMONSOULED go out with a bang.
-JM
July 19, 2013
GHOST IN THE ASHES now available on iTunes
iBooks users, your patience has been rewarded: GHOST IN THE ASHES is now available on iTunes in most, but not all, iBookstore countries.
Though given how often Caina assassinates corrupt government officials, I don’t imagine the censors in more authoritarian countries will allow THE GHOSTS books anytime soon.
-JM
July 18, 2013
commerce, self-publishing, and GHOST IN THE ASHES
Andrew Fox has an interesting post about the intersection of commerce with science fiction and self-publishing.
This amused me because in GHOST IN THE ASHES, Caina essentially becomes a small business owner. Opening the Imperial capital’s first coffeehouse isn’t an end to itself, but a method to collect information of interest to the Ghosts and the Emperor. (This has a basis in history, actually – when coffeehouses began opening in the Ottoman Empire and in western Europe during the Early Modern period, they quickly became loci of political intrigue.) One of the subplots of GHOST IN THE ASHES is that Caina finds she actually likes running the coffeehouse, and is worried that her assumed identity is going to subsume her.
But to more contemporary concerns, a self-publisher writer really has to think of himself as a small business owner. Essentially, you’ve become your own publisher, and you have to think of yourself like that. Even before the advent of ebooks, I never cared for the idea of a writer as this sort of “artist” disconnected from the concerns of reality, scratching away at a notebook in a coffeehouse (perhaps one owned by Caina Amalas).
Self-publishing is an excellent way for a writer to cure himself of that conceit.
-JM
July 17, 2013
Caesar: Portrait Of A Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy
Recently, I had to take some time off, and that meant I had time for some reading. One of the books I read was Caesar: Portrait Of A Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy. It was quite a good summary of both Caesar’s life and the state of Roman politics at the end of the Republic. When modern people think of a “republic”, they think of something like the US, but the Roman Republic was essentially an oligarchy that allowed its members to compete among themselves for power. When the system started to break down, allowing oligarchs to seize too much power, the Republic began producing men like Sulla, Marius, and Cinna, and finally Caesar, the first man to seize supreme power in Rome. His successor Augustus essentially codified the dictatorship, and kept the Republic on as window-dressing for his power.
Definitely recommended for anyone interested in Roman history.
-JM
ebook sales for June 2012
It occurred to me that I hadn’t done an ebook sales post for a while. Though to be fair, it was because I have been busy writing new books to sell.
I am pleased to report that I sold 7,279 books in June, for my best month ever. Of those, 825 were copies of SOUL OF SWORDS, which had a very strong first month.
Thanks, everyone! There are entire towns that have less than 7,279 people.
For the curious, here are total numbers dating back to April 2011, when I started doing ebooks.
April 2011: 22
May 2011: 105
June 2011: 236
July 2011: 366
August 2011: 489
September 2011: 1335
October 2011: 1607
November 2011: 2142
December 2011: 2340
January 2012: 3261
February 2012: 3750
March 2012: 3644
April 2012: 3521
May 2012: 3886
June 2012: 3580
July 2012: 4153
August 2012: 4608
September 2012: 4785
October 2012: 4923
November 2012: 5400
December 2012: 5584
January 2013: 6369
February 2013: 5265
March 2013: 7084
April 2013: 5069
May 2013: 5691
June 2013: 7279
-JM
July 14, 2013
what’s next after GHOST IN THE ASHES?
Now that GHOST IN THE ASHES is out, what’s next?
I will start writing the next THE GHOSTS book, GHOST IN THE MASK, sometime in August or September, which September being more likely. First I’m going to start my new series, FROSTBORN, with FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT. I’ve been making good progress on it, and am just under halfway through the rough draft.
Here’s an excerpt:
“That is the sum of it,” said Ridmark.
“That is stark madness,” said Caius.
“Unquestionably.”
“We’ll likely be killed.”
“Most probably.”
“So,” said Caius. “When do we start?”
Ridmark felt himself smile. “Why, at once.”
And let’s have a second excerpt:
“It has been a long time,” he said, “hasn’t it?”
“Stay away from me,” said Calliande.
“Oh, not that long, not really,” said the high elf, as if she had not spoken. “Not in the greater scheme of things. Your kindred has walked the face of the world for…what? A thousand years? The blink of an eye.” He titled his head to the side. “Though from your perspective, I suppose that is almost an eternity.”
Calliande shuddered. Despite all the strange things that had befallen her, somehow this strange, gaunt creature frightened her more than all of them together.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The high elf blinked. “You don’t remember me? At all?” He laughed. “Ah. But that is delightful…
-JM
Death’s Angels, by William King
Recently, I had to take some time off, and that meant I had time for some reading. One of the books I read was DEATH’S ANGELS, by William King.
To sum up, the book is basically a cross between Glen Cook’s THE BLACK COMPANY and H.P. Lovecraft, set in an 18th century Europe if 18th century Europe were ruled by racist magic-using elves.
In the setting, the elves call themselves Terrarchs, and invaded the human world after their homeland fell victim to some mysterious catastrophe. A thousand years later, the Terrarchs still rule over the humans, but their empire has fractured into several competing states, all which regard humans differently – some treat humans as free albeit second-class citizens, while others regard humans as enslaved cattle. However, all the Terrarchs are starting to lose their grip, as the humans are simply outbreeding them, and developing technology is beginning to erode the edge the Terrarchs’ magic and longevity give them. Magic beats sword, but a cannon loaded with grapeshot beats both magic and sword.
The chief protagonist of the story is Rik, a half-human, half-Terrarch soldier. Since halfbreeds are despised everywhere, Rik started out as a thief, and then joined the army to escape his vengeful former associates. When sent to fight a gang of demon-worshiping rebels, Rik kills a renegade Terrarch sorcerer who had been aiding the rebels. Rik takes possession of the sorcerer’s spellbooks and tries to teach himself magic from them, failing to realize that a lot of very dangerous people, human and Terrarchs both, want the contents of those spellbooks.
Mayhem ensues.
The book has a compelling plot, and does a good job of capturing the feel of Europe at the start of the industrial era, the poverty and despair alongside the wealth and the massive possibilities. When discussing fantasy, it’s useless to talk about historical realism, because if you have a setting where people can summon up giant spider-demons, you have taken realism out back to be shot. But you can talk about verisimilitude, and DEATH’S ANGELS does a good job with the verisimilitude of the setting. Naturally, the additional of sorcerous elves and otherworldly horrors to early industrial Europe simply adds spice.
Anyway, I recommend the book, though it will be a bit dark for some readers. I will definitely be picking up the sequels.
-JM
July 13, 2013
Reader Question Day #67 – Side Quests and Differences of Opinion
DG asks, concerning the DEMONSOULED series:
However, I must say that I am dumbfounded that Timothy did not have a larger part in the later books. He seemed like he was being built up to have a larger role in the first couple books and then he all but disappeared with hardly any mention at all.
What’s interesting is that people have said the same thing about Adalar and Sir Nathan, or Rhodemar Greenshield and Ardanna the High Druid, or some of the other characters in the DEMONSOULED series. I think different people see different things in the books.
In the end, though, I think at some point a writer has to say “stop”. The story must come to a conclusion, and that will be that. One of the big dangers of writing fantasy series is that they tend to grow in the telling. We can all think of a fantasy series that was supposed to be a trilogy, but then turned into six books, or twelve, or expanded infinitely with new characters and new settings and new plots, while the main plot completely stalls out. I didn’t want that to happen to DEMONSOULED.
(Tom Simon has an insightful essay on the topic here.)
So I wanted to avoid prequelitis or the Infinitely Recursive Side Quest, and decided that DEMONSOULED would go seven books, and that would be that. (Though I do plan to do more short stories, and return to the setting in the future.)
That said, I do intend for THE GHOSTS to go on for some time yet, and I think the books will bear up under that. Part of that is THE GHOSTS is structured differently than DEMONSOULED, more episodically than the long epic arc of DEMONSOULED. And I do plan for FROSTBORN to be between fourteen and sixteen books.
We’ll see if I can pull it off.
Ari asks:
What do you think of this review of GHOST IN THE FLAMES (link redacted)? It seems like the reviewer completely missed the point of the book.
Eh. Well. It’s the Internet, and anyone can say anything they like on the Internet.
More seriously, the bald fact is that a writer cannot expect everyone to like his work. I have friends and family who have never read a word I have written (unless it was a text message telling them when to meet me at Subway for lunch), who don’t even know I am a writer, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would not like my books. This isn’t “woe-is-me-I’m-a-bad-writer” complaining, but a simple observation of fact – some of my friends and family don’t read, or only read books about the American Civil War, or would read one of my books out of a sense of obligation and be horrified the first time Mazael cuts off someone’s head. And I have a relative who is eagerly working his way through the entire DEMONSOULED series.
The general reading public is like that, except times a billion.
I know criticism rankles, but if you write long enough it rankles less. When you’re a new writer you’re sensitive, but as you do it longer you get harder. I started writing DEMONSOULED twelve years ago, and since then I’ve written something like twenty novels and a bajillion short stories.
At this point, if someone likes my books, I’m glad of it and a little surprised…but if someone doesn’t, well, no hard feelings.
-JM
